The High-Stakes Plan to Eliminate Deadly Superbugs
http://gizmodo.com/scientists-want-to-use-predators-to-fight-drug-resistan-1776488151
Bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics far more quickly than humans are discovering new ones. Thats why a DARPA-funded research team is exploring a fascinating new way we might win the war against germs: not with drugs, but with predatory bacteria that sound like monsters from science fiction.
Lions, sharks, and Schwarzenegger flicks are more likely to come to mind when you hear the word predator, but certain bacteria are also fearsome hunters, voraciously consuming their fellow single-celled organisms. In fact, predatory bacteria have no trouble annihilating some of the most drug-resistant bugs. Microbiologist Daniel Kadouri hopes we can use these killers to our advantage.
Every agency out therethe WHO, the CDC, the NIHhave all figured out that drug resistant pathogens are as big a threat as global warming, Kadouri said when I spoke with him at a DARPA technology expo this week. Were trying to see if we can do things differently, by using predatory bacteria as live antibiotics.
colleagues have been conducting laboratory experiments that pit two specific predatorsbacteria from the genera Bdellovibrio and Micavibrioagainst some of the deadliest human pathogens.
Bdellovibrio attacks biofilms, Kadouri said, referring to the sticky bacterial secretions that become the spawning ground of drug-resistant infections. Theyll attach to the biofilm, drill themselves inside the cells, and start dividing. From one [Bdellovibrio] cell entering you can get about 80 cells breaking out. Its like something from the movie Alien.
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Humans can be clever little apes when we put our minds to it.